Mark of the wild – Reduces cost of MOTW by 50% (NOTE: GOTW is gone and MOTW is now group & already costs no reagent)

Unburdened rebirth (unchanged) – rebirth no longer requires a reagent

Typhoon – reduces cost of the spell by 8%, increases radius by 10 yards, but no longer knocks enemies back

My opinion:

I like how the glyph system works in Cataclysm, as you can always swap glyphs in and out once you have them. I think our prime glyph set is really going to allow us to tailor our abilities on a fight-per-fight basis. On heavy tank and spank, direct damage, little movement fights, I’d want starsurge, starfire, and wrath. During fights with a lot of movement, I’d probably favor the DoT-centric glyphs and go for Moonfire and Insect Swarm. Having a third tier of glyphs also allows us to keep favorites like Starfall, but also add in additional utility glyphs like innervate. I REALLY wish that innervate would have given the bonus if you cast on yourself as well, as a 20% mana return every 3 minutes is pretty weak. (Unless nerfed, mages get 60% mana back at a lot quicker time with Evocation).

3 Comments for this entry

These glyphs are very confusing to me. GC said that prime glyphs were going to be straight bonuses to spells you use a lot like +5% damage to fireball or cooldown reduction for fire ele. He also said that they didnt like the wrath design and that glyphs shouldn’t change your rotation. With that in mind why are Starsirge and wrath not talents, and why is starfall a major glyph and not prime? they seem to be contradicting themselves a lot lately

Orrak, the glyphs listed are as straight forward as you can get; they are purely stat and ability buffs.

The glyphs wont necessarily effect the druids rotation, however they will change how the druid stats him/herself. For instance I’m planing on stacking haste so that there will be no down time between eclipse procs. This stat build stacked with the 3/3 genesis talent means that my IS and MF may not need to be refreshed, so i wont need the Starfire glyph. Druids who stack more crit or mastery would have much longer eclipse cycles and the Starfire glyph would be an integral part of their build. Starsurge and Starfall glyphs may also be implemented to time the proc for starfall with that for lunar eclipse (as the buff now buffs all arcane dammage (woot!!)).

Finally, it is ridiculous to suggest that such a fundamental aspect of the balance rotation should become a talent. It would be a wasted pre-requisite talent which is exactly what blizzard hoped to eliminate through the new talent trees.

Haste is by far going to be the heavier stat. I think there’s going to be a big difference in dps/glyph strategy when we’re 85 versus 80. At 80 we have the leisure of highly inflated numbers for haste and crit. Things such as glyphs, etc, may be totally different when we don’t swing from Eclipse to Eclipse as quick as we do at 80. At 80, starsurge glyph lines up starfall almost exact. We may not need it at 85 due to the longer period between Eclipses.

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over "